The Next Campaign (I'll Probably Never Run)

A couple of weeks ago I was grabbed by an idea that's now busily fizzing away, and may make up the basis of my next campaign, if indeed there is such a thing. (That said, that's looking increasingly unlikely. My interest in D&D has been waning fairly dramatically for some time, and with the potential house move in the offing my involvement may be coming to an end. At the very least, it's likely to be a while, by which time I may favour something else.)

Anyway, the premise of the campaign can be described as follows: One part "The Night Manager", one part "Nineteen Eighty-Four", and one part "The Demolished Man", all set in the continent of Sarlona on Eberron. The PCs are agents of the rebellion against the repressive thought-police state of that continent. Fairly grim, very paranoid, with lots of sneaking around and skullduggery.

The biggest problem with the concept as it stands is that it depends pretty heavily on psionics, which 5e doesn't currently support (and the ideas WotC have floated for psionics in this edition seem to take it in a very different direction). That means the campaign would probably have to be 3e-based, and I'm not entirely keen on stepping back into that morass...

But it's a cool concept, no?

Curse of Strahd

I have a theory that when doing a cover version, reboot, remake, or retelling, it's best to choose something that had good potential but which was significantly flawed in the implementation. If you remake a classic, you have the problem that even if you do everything right, you'll almost certainly end up with something that is as good, but without the originality.

"I6: Ravenloft" is a classic D&D adventure. It is one of, if not the, greatest D&D adventures of all time. Heck, it's one of the best RPG adventures of all time. So the team at WotC were really up against it when trying to remake this. (On the other hand, they practically had to - Ravenloft is one of very few D&D adventures to exist in some form in all the 'main' editions, assuming you count the boardgame as the 4e version. So there's tradition to consider...)

The result is a fine, fine adventure. But it's just not as good as the original, on two counts. The first is simply lack of originality - Ravenloft already had a lot of Dracula about it, and this version cleaves much closer to the original than some of the ones in other editions. That may not be a bad thing for people who haven't seen the original, but for those of us who have...

The second weakness (for me) was one of sheer length. The original module is a densely-packed 32 pages. This version is a slightly less dense 256 pages. Of this, the biggest chapter is Castle Ravenloft itself, which is very close to the contents of the original module. That leaves a hundred pages of extra material that, while good, feels significantly bloated. Quite a bit of it feels like it exists to pad things out and, in particular, to let the PCs build up levels before they start the 'real' adventure. (Of course, part of that is inherent in using a level-based game to tell a story like this. 3rd level PCs can't stand against the BBEG, so there's a need to get them to a point where they can. But, honestly, I think I'd be inclined just to start them a bit higher in level and cut the padding.)

Don't get me wrong - there's an awful lot of good material here. But there's too much that feels extraneous. (Though, ironically, in the past I've complained about 4e adventures having no extra material, leaving only the critical path and thus being a railroad. Hopefully, there's a happy medium there somewhere.)

All in all, I'll recommend this one quite highly - especially to anyone who hasn't experienced the original. In my opinion it's the second-best 5e storyline to date, behind only "Out of the Abyss" (and it doesn't have the big weaknesses of that storyline's climax, which is good). It's just not as good as the original. On the other hand, I'm very much looking forward to WotC's next effort, because the trend definitely seems to be upwards.

One last thing: the binding on my copy has already started to weaken after only a single read-through and no at-table use at all. That's really very poor.

The 5e Cheat Sheet

Back in the mists of time, when I was running 3e for my previous group, I used to maintain a "cheat sheet" for each PC containing key bits of data - their Listen and Spot modifiers, three AC values (normal, flat-footed, touch), the running total of their hit points, and their current Initiative score.

I've actually stopped tracking that information, but I'm becoming increasingly inclined to start doing so again for 5e. My motive for this is actually pretty simple: every time one of my PCs casts a spell, I inevitably have to ask the save DC, which is a pain.

It's fair to say that 5e is slightly different from 3e in a number of ways, and so the "cheat sheet" will likewise need to change. And so, I'm considering the following items: Passive Perception, AC, Spell Save DC, Hit Points, and Death Saves. I'm now having the party roll initiative when combat starts and using a much more free-form round structure than previously, and so there's little point in tracking initiative the same way.

There may be a few more items. I'll update this post if I think of them.

Campaign Theme

When designing a new campaign, I have traditionally come to it with questions about the type of story I want to tell, or some notion of the characters involed, or something of that sort. "The Eberron Code" started with a core mystery (pretty much lifted from "The Da Vinci Code", though it went in a different direction from there); "Imperial Fist" started with the notion that the PCs would all be Imperial agents tasked with hunting down Jedi.

However, I've recently been considering adding another dimension to campaign building, which is the idea of adding a theme to the campaign as well as a concept. The idea here would be that the campaign would pose a question at the outset (or possibly start with a core statement of values, or philosophical stance, or whatever), and then all the major elements in the campaign would be riffed off of that theme.

For example, Spider-Man's theme can be best encapsulated with the saying "with great power comes great responsibility", and most of his enemies then reflect that as they use various forms of great power mostly without that responsibility. (And then, just to twist things even more, sometimes you get sympathetic villains who do try to act with responsibility, or allies who shirk that responsibility.)

Of course, one of the consequences of setting up a campaign theme is that it would extend to the PCs also - when creating a character, a player would be challenged to answer the question "how does this character fit in with the theme?" (and, of course, things like Inspiration should also be tied into the theme - in addition to gaining it for acting according to Ideals, Bonds, etc, the player should gain it for acting in keeping with the campaign theme).

At the moment, it's all a bit nebulous, and is robbed somewhat of relevance by the fact that I'm not planning another campaign any time soon. But I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

So What Now?

Last night the PCs managed to chase down one of the villains of my campaign, who I'd planned to use to introduce a twist - she was a fairly disgruntled enemy agent who they could potentially turn to their side, but who they could certainly use to provide some very significant information to move the plot forward.

Alas, that didn't quite go according to plan - the interrogation ended in a shocking moment of violence and a body on the ground, inconveniently while only about half the information had been revealed.

But, almost miraculously, there was a get-out clause - in order to protect against telepathy, I'd given the villain a brooch of mind shielding (like the ring, but in brooch form). On reading the description of the item, it turned out that that item has a quirk where if the wearer dies then her personality is stored in the brooch, and can communicate with the new wearer. Captain Exposition lives!

But at the end of the session, the PCs decided to pack up and leave Sharn for the Demon Wastes, which had been planned as the location for the climax of the whole campaign. I'd certainly intended for them to go there eventually... just not really while they were still fourth level!

So I'm at a bit of a loss as to what should happen next. I have a couple of inklings... but there's also the fear that a nasty TPK is just around the corner...

Rumour Has It

Reading the latest Pathfinder adventure has reminded me of something I meant to talk about:

Very often in published adventures, and especially in Pathfinder ones, there is a provided list of rumours. Usually, some of these are rumours that turn out to be true while others are red herrings that actually turn out to be false. (Though the PCs may well never confirm the falsehood of the latter sort, of course.) So far, so good.

But where I think these adventures go wrong is in the means of giving the PCs access to these rumours: generally, the adventure says that if the PCs ask around then they can roll Gather Information (or equivalent) and if successful they are rewarded with a random rumour. Which may, of course be false - some reward that!

I'm inclined to think that there are at least four ways this can be improved. In order, from best to worst:

1. If one of the PCs is trained in Gather Information (or proficient in the D&D 5e equivalent, or whatever), just give that PC the entire rumour table. No roll, and it's assumed they're automatically doing the "ask around" bit as a background task... but there's no guarantee that the rumours are true.
2. If the PCs ask around, just give them the entire rumour table. No roll, but no guarantee that the rumours are true either.
3. If the PCs ask around, select (randomly or otherwise) a rumour for them. But in this case, all rumours should be true.
4. If the PCs ask around, have them roll Gather Information, and if successful give them the entire rumour table. But in this case, all rumours should be true.

The point here is that the rumours help flesh out the adventure - in general, the DM should want to have the PCs have access to them. That being the case, you want the barrier for entry to be as low as possible. Hence the above.

(Of course, this also ties into my view that characters trained in the various 'knowledge' skills should equally be given some sort of "Five Things You Know..." regarding the current adventure. This serves the dual roles of adding depth and flavour to the adventure and also rewarding clever play, as players may then use that information to their advantage.)

Evil PCs: The Job Interview

I've been giving a little thought to the question of evil PCs recently. Granted, I no longer use alignment, which means such PCs wouldn't get the official label, but the concept still applies.

Broadly speaking, when creating an evil PC I think there are two important questions to answer:

• What is it that makes this PC evil?
• Why should the other PCs continue to work with this guy?

(Of course, the second question is something that can be asked of any PC, and especially for any 'jerk' PC, not just outright evil ones. But that makes it no less valid to ask it of the evil PCs!)

In particular, it's worth considering whether this PC will be a lone evil PC in a non-evil group, or if he'll be part of an evil party. And, in the latter case, it's worth asking whether this PC has his own agenda, or if the group as a whole has a common goal - the latter case makes answering the second question easier, while the first may make for a more interesting party dynamic. ('Interesting' in the sense of 'explosive', that is!)

And it's probably worth noting that "he's really good at killing things" probably isn't a good enough answer to the second question. After all, that would be equally true of a PC who was exactly the same except for being non-evil. So you'll need something else - maybe he's related to another PC, or maybe the group's employer wants him along, or maybe the others simply don't know about his generally evil ways. It doesn't necessarily matter what the answer is, only that there is an answer.

Of course, there's also the common issue of players choosing an evil PC because they just want to cause trouble in the game. But I've talked about that previously, and it boils down to an obvious rule: don't be that guy. So that's enough about that, I think!